I can't think of this country without Quebec. Je parle francais. And when I think about being a Canadian, speaking French is part of it.

I am an English-speaking Canadian, but my entire family - Russian exiles and the Canadians they married - is buried in Quebec, and if Quebec were to separate, I would feel I had been cut in two.

Secessionists, whether in Scotland, Catalonia, Quebec or anywhere else, invariably assume that a person must either be Scottish or British, Catalan or Spanish, Quebecois or Canadian. What about those who feel they are both?

I had a lot of hubris going into politics, but I didn't think I was Pierre Trudeau.

The wars of the future will be fought by computer technicians and by lawyers and high-altitude specialists, and that may mean war will be increasingly abstract, hard to think about and hard to control.

I'd be wary of writing this country off. There are some scary and ugly things about it, but it remains a turbulently, explosively innovative place.